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Brain, Beauty, and Art – Essays Bringing Neuroaesthetics into Focus - Oxford Scholarship Online
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Brain, Beauty, and Art: Essays Bringing Neuroaesthetics into Focus

Anjan Chatterjee and Eileen Cardilo

Abstract

Neuroscience joins the long history of discussions about aesthetics in psychology, philosophy, art history, and the creative arts. In this volume, leading scholars in this nascent field reflect on the promise of neuroaesthetics to enrich our understanding of this universal yet diverse facet of human experience. The volume will inform and stimulate anyone with an abiding interest in why it is that, across time and culture, we respond to beauty, engage with art, and are affected by music and architecture. The volume consists of essays from foundational researchers whose empirical work launched t ... More

Keywords: neuroaesthetics, experimental aesthetics, beauty, visual aesthetics, cognitive neuroscience, engagement with art, aesthetic experience, interdisciplinarity, art perception

Bibliographic Information

Print publication date: 2022 Print ISBN-13: 9780197513620
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2021 DOI:10.1093/oso/9780197513620.001.0001

Authors

Affiliations are at time of print publication.

Anjan Chatterjee, editor
Professor of Neurology and Founding Director of the Penn Center for Neuroaesthetics, Penn State University

Eileen Cardilo, editor
Associate Director of the Penn Center for Neuroaesthetics, Penn State University

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Contents

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Front Matter

Title Pages

Prologue

Contributors

Section I Frameworks

1 An Early Framework for a Cognitive Neuroscience of Visual Aesthetics

Anjan Chatterjee

2 Bringing It All Together

Marcos Nadal and Camilo J. Cela-Conde

3 But, What Actually Happens When We Engage with “Art”?

Matthew Pelowski and Helmut Leder

4 Naturalizing Aesthetics

Steven Brown

5 Moving Toward Emotions in the Aesthetic Experience

Cinzia Di Dio and Vittorio Gallese

6 The Aesthetic Triad

Oshin Vartanian and Anjan Chatterjee

7 How Neuroimaging Is Transforming Our Understanding of Aesthetic Taste

Martin Skov

8 The Cognitive Neuroscience of Aesthetic Experience

Marcos Nadal and Marcus Pearce

Section II Beauty

9 Facial Beauty and the Medial Orbitofrontal Cortex

John P. O’Doherty and Raymond J. Dolan

10 Beautiful People in the Brain of the Beholder

Anjan Chatterjee

11 The Mark of Villainy

Franziska Hartung

12 A Quest for Beauty

Thomas Jacobsen

13 Scene Preferences, Aesthetic Appeal, and Curiosity

Edward A. Vessel, Xiaomin Yue, and Irving Biederman

14 Kinds of Beauty and the Prefrontal Cortex

Teresa Pegors

15 Expertise and Aesthetic Liking

Martin Skov and Ulrich Kirk

16 Social Meaning Brings Beauty

Xianyou He and Wei Zhang

Section III Art

17 The Contributions of Emotion and Reward to Aesthetic Judgment of Visual Art

Oshin Vartanian

18 Embodiment and the Aesthetic Experience of Images

Vittorio Gallese, David Freedberg, and Maria Alessandra Umiltà

19 The Role of Left Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortices in Aesthetic Valuation

Enric Munar and Camilo J. Cela-Conde

20 Noninvasive Brain Stimulation of the Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex During Aesthetic Appreciation

Marcos Nadal, Zaira Cattaneo, and Camilo J. Cela-Conde

21 Is Artistic Composition in Abstract Art Detected Automatically?

Claudia Menzel, Gyula Kovács, Gregor U. Hayn-Leichsenring, and Christoph Redies

22 The Contribution of Visual Area V5 to the Perception of Implied Motion in Art and Its Appreciation

Marcos Nadal and Zaira Cattaneo

23 Art Is Its Own Reward

Simon Lacey and K. Sathian

24 Imaging the Subjective

Edward A. Vessel and G. Gabrielle Starr

25 Cultural Neuroaesthetics of Delicate Sadness Induced by Noh Masks

Naoyuki Osaka

26 Toward a Computational Understanding of Neuroaesthetics

Kiyohito Iigaya and John P. O’Doherty

27 Artists, Artworks, Aesthetics, Cognition

William P. Seeley

28 Aesthetic Liking Is Not Only Driven by Object Properties, but Also by Your Expectations

Martin Skov and Ulrich Kirk

29 Finding Mutual Interest Between Neuroscience and Aesthetics

Andrew J. Parker

30 What Can We Learn About Art from People with Neurological Disease?

Anjan Chatterjee

Section IV Music

31 Chills, Bets, and Dopamine

Laura Ferreri, Jordi Riba, Robert Zatorre, and Antoni Rodriguez-Fornells

32 Why Does Music Evoke Strong Emotions?

Daniel J. Levitin and Lindsay A. Fleming

33 Music in All Its Beauty

Elvira Brattico and Vinoo Alluri

34 Investigating Musical Emotions in People with Unilateral Brain Damage

Amy M. Belfi, Agathe Pralus, Catherine Hirel, Daniel Tranel, Barbara Tillmann, and Anne Caclin

Section V Language and Literature

35 The Neurocognitive Poetics Model of Literary Reading 10 Years After

Arthur M. Jacobs

36 The Power of Poetry

Eugen Wassiliwizky and Winfried Menninghaus

37 Pictograph Portrays What It Is

Xianyou He and Wei Zhang

Section VI Dance

38 Movement, Synchronization, and Partnering in Dance

Steven Brown

39 Dance, Expertise, and Sensorimotor Aesthetics

Beatriz Calvo-Merino

40 An Eye for the Impossible

Emily S. Cross

41 The Mind, the Brain, and the Moving Body

Bettina Bläsing and Beatriz Calvo-Merino

42 Training Effects on Affective Perception of Body Movements

Louise P. Kirsch and Emily S. Cross

Section VII Architecture

43 The Neuroaesthetics of Architecture

Oshin Vartanian

44 Architectural Styles as Subordinate Scene Categories

Dirk B. Walther

45 Architectural Affordances

Zakaria Djebbara and Klaus Gramann

46 Architectural Design and the Mind

Alex Coburn

Epilogue

Anjan Chatterjee and Eileen R. Cardillo

End Matter

Index